Contents

Life

Father Francis was born into a Roman Catholic family on August 14, 1893 in Chomýž, Moravia, now part of the present day Czech Republic. In 1912, he graduated from the Archdiocesan School in Kremsier after which he continued his education at the Faculty of Theology of the university in Olomouc. He graduated in 1916 and was ordained a priest. After serving briefly as vicar in the towns of Bílovec and Vítkov, Fr. Francis continued his studies at the Charles University in Prague. In 1920, he received his doctorate in theology from the Theological Faculty in Olomouc. Fr. Francis then attended the University of Paris simultaneously studying in several specialties. He graduated in 1926 after defending his postdoctoral studies and received a Doctor of Letters degree from the Sorbonne.

In 1927, he returned to Czechoslovakia. Receiving his appointment in 1928, he became professor of ecclesiastical history at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Charles University in Prague. There, he became one of the founders of the Institute of Slavic Studies in Prague and co-founder of the journal Byzantinoslavica.

After the German occupation of the "rest of Czechoslovakia" in 1939, Fr. Dvornik emigrated to Great Britain in 1939, and to France in 1940. In France, he taught at the Collège de France and the Paris Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 1948, Fr. Dvornik was appointed Professor of Byzantine Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Center at Harvard University. Between 1962 and 1965, he was an Advisor for History and Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council. In 1965, he became professor emeritus.

In later years, Dvornik regularly returned to Czechoslovakia to visit. On November 4, 1975, during a visit to his birthplace in Chomýž, he suffered a fatal heart attack and was buried in his family tomb in the cemetery of Bílavsko.

Writings

The product of Fr. Dvornik's work was an extensive number of books and articles. He was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from the Universities of London and Paris. In particular were his studies concerning Roman and Byzantine relations, especially his studies on the Photian schism and the history and civilization of the Slavs. His writings have been published in English, French, German, Czech, and Slovak. Pope Paul VI presented to him the honorary title of Monsignor.

Les Slaves: histoire et civilisation : de l'Antiquité aux débuts de l'époque contemporaine. translated by Danielle Pavlevski with the collaboration of Maroussia Chpolyansky. Paris: Seuil, 1970. French combination of The Slavs (Boston, 1956) and The Slavs in European History and Civilisation (New Brunswick, 1962).